1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the art of material and article handling devices, in general, and product label handling devices, in particular.
2. Description of the Prior Art
An apparatus for dispensing product labels is disclosed in my co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 095,687, filed Sept. 14, 1987, entitled BUTT CUT LABEL DISPENSING MACHINE which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 4,867,833, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
It is common practice to display the price of a consumer product directly on the label of the product. Such price display may be obtained by a number of conventional methods. For example, the price of the product may be printed on the label at the time when the product label itself is printed.
Such a method has the inherent disadvantages of potentially printing an incorrect price on the label or printing a price on the label which, by the time the product reaches the retail customer, may not be the price at which the retailer desires to sell the product.
If the printing of the price directly on the product results in either of the undesired situations mentioned above, then steps must be taken to correct the problem. These steps may entail the costly printing of new labels with the correct price thereon for replacement of the incorrectly priced labels or, the incorrect price on the labels may be covered over manually by tags or stickers having the correct price thereon.
Another example of a method for providing the cost of a product on a product label involves printing the product label without a price thereon and subsequently, usually manually, the retailer provides the label with a tag or sticker bearing the desired product price.
Each of the above-mentioned methods for providing the price of a product directly on the product label suffer from the serious disadvantages of cost and time inefficiency.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a device for rapidly producing product labels with the appropriate price thereon.
It is a further object to provide a device for covering the price displayed on incorrectly-priced labels with tags or stickers bearing the correct product price.
It is a further object to provide a device for furnishing unpriced product labels with tags or stickers bearing the appropriate price thereon.
Still other objects and advantages will become apparent when one considers the attached drawings and the description of the invention presented herein below.